Thursday, July 14, 2016

There is apparently a powerful movement afoot among the no-gender-in-anything crowd to replace the venerable gender specific singular pronouns “he” and “she” with sexually neutral but normally plural “they.” The debate over the pronouns was recently discussed in a Huffington Post piece entitled “It’s Time to Embrace the Singular ‘They:’ A Humanistic Pronoun,” written by the appropriately named Maddie Crum, the “Cultural Editor” for Huffpost (honest, I am not making this up!)

Corporate America and many in academia have long embraced using a form of “they” in grammatically challenged sentences like “Everyone is entitled to their opinion” but Crum goes much farther than that, providing as an example of her preferred usage “My friend ate a bagel. They beamed with perfect joy.” She never quite explains why “they” singular is “humanistic” but she describes the proposed ascendancy of “they” as the linguistic equivalent of “tearing down gendered bathroom signs” and eliminating other “dividers and stand between men, women and people who identify as non-binary.” One commenter on her piece refers to the emergence of an “identity-sensitive lexicon.” And for those who still doubt, Crum notes that the “verbally gracious” singular “they” was awarded the “Word of the Year” prize by the world renowned American Dialect Society! Crum also observes sagaciously that using “they” instead of the sexist pronouns provides anonymity on the internet.

That would actually work, whether the Germans were amenable or not. But in Italian, where there is no Neuter, are we to refer to il macchino for the car or la libra for the book? The same goes for French, where not only the gendered "the" would need to be changed, but the suffixes as well. Shall we say le femme or la homme?

Frankly, the whole thing smacks of cultural supremacy and racism. We should probably listen to Ben Shapiro, hunt them down, and hurt their careers.

91 Comments:

This tyranny of the minority is just probing what - if anything - will ever make people stop it. It's teenage boundary-testing. If they take your schools, your churches, your God, your flag, your Bible, your sports team, and now your language, Mr. and Mrs. Middle America, will you continue to chase little distractions or will you upend the political landscape and say - no tyranny of the majority, but no tyranny of the minority, either?

I'm voting Trump because all the people who are doing these bad things say he'll roll some of this back. RBG hating him means, well, there's the first peaceful step to reclaiming the country and culture.

That would actually work, whether the Germans were amenable or not. But in Italian, where there is no Neuter, are we to refer to il macchino for the car or la libra for the book? The same goes for French, where not only the gendered "the" would need to be changed, but the suffixes as well. Shall we say le femme or la homme?

This is yet another case where the left has made a cause out of how terrible America and American culture is. Yet once more they have not understood that nearly every other culture on Earth is worse And even that assumes that you actually buy into the idea that what they're complaining about is truly a problem.

Supposedly our culture is a rape culture, but almost all other cultures are worse. Supposedly our culture is racist, but nearly any other culture is worse. Supposedly our culture has insane beauty standards, but nearly every other culture is worse.

It's almost like they've never actually interacted with any other cultures.

The name "Maddie" reinforces those same biases she fights against. She either needs to off herself, stfu, or change her name to a gender-neutral number. Number two is taken. Haven't found out who number one is yet.

@7. Yall poor, poor blue-bellies. We Southerners have long had a plural `you`. Why do yall kick against the pricks? Replacing `he` and `she` with `they` sounds a lot like` ebonics` or `duckspeak`` in `1984`.

I am told that Mandarin pronouns have no genders, a he/she/(maybe)it. With the added benefit of eastern mystique, it's almost racist for these people to not learn and use Chinese instead of their mother tongue.

There is a place for a word (or words, singular/plural) that can be used when the sex of the person you are pronouning is specifically unknown and left deliberately ambiguous. If you see a dark, hooded shape moving in the night, and you don't know whether the being is he, she, it, or even human, then in English you supposed to use "he/him". But that can be distracting or misleading. So yes, in that case, having an explicitly sex-unknown (not merely sex-ambiguous) pronoun would be nice.

But for the general case? I'd prefer an infantry squad of "riflemen" rather than "rifle-carrying persons of uncertain genital fixation."

If you don't give the Maddie Crums a beat down with rhetoric you will end up a cuck rationalizing all her silliness in the end.

Here is some rhetoric to be your pilum throw, "That's silly" and when she/it or the contraction "shit" comes back at you with the inevitable appeal of authority you go "In your opinion", because never let a progtard be or source authority undisputed.

In Hebrew the verbs conjugate differently for the different genders. "Hoo omar" is he said. "Hee omroh" is she said. "Ani Oheiv" is how a man says "I love." A woman says "Ani Ahav." How would the suggestion cited above work in Hebrew.

A huge number of languages have gender baked in the cake far more intractably than English. English is quite easy to "neuter", as it turns out. Can't do it with any of the Latinate languages, including the Spanish that's flooding the US right now.

And, the situation is even worse for England. All the Muslims flooding the place speaking Arabic or Pashto are bringing languages that don't even recognize neuter. They are strictly male-female binary. Shocking to a SJW!

Because they want it I will never comply. Here's the thing though, it wouldn't matter if everyone complied with all this insanity and idiocy of the leftists. They would just keep changing their demands up so that nobody would ever find a comfort zone. They literally get off sexually on making others miserable because the true nature of the leftist is contrarian. We have always been at war with Oceania.

It's worse than that. This woman is trying to silence Women of Color and People of Perversion by stealing their pronouns to make them indistinguishable from their Internet and literacy-inventing oppressors.

Check your privilege and Worldstar HipHop, you fugly old-ass cracker - "Bitch" is the pronoun of choice for de mule uh de world!

"It's almost like they've never actually interacted with any other cultures."

Most of them haven't. If John Scalzi had ever seen Third World poverty up close he would never have written his ridiculous "Being Poor." Examples: Being poor [in America] means the horror of having to wear K-Mart tennis shoes and having to eat generic breakfast cereal.

Anybody who has seen the slums of Manila or Rio kisses the ground of America when they get back.

Glad to see you use the word "parochial" to describe the average liberal. I've held that opinion of them for quite some time. They know other countries exist, but they are somehow mythical in their imaginations.

This is actually a situation in Ayn Rand's "Anthem", though it's more to enforce collectiveness on the people. It's a future where people don't even know about the words I or me, it's always we or us even in singular.

Also, yep, Mandarin pronounces he and she the same (as ta1, or tah in a high constant tone), but they're written different. 他 for he or him, 她 for she or her. In fact their word for "you (informal)" in gendered in writing, but stillpronounced the same way (你 vs 妳）

You are late, Vox. The example you put re. German and Italian, is already in full force in Spain, where any PC compliant SJW or politician would go to absurd lenghts to use this new language: "los trabajadores y trabajadoras", "compañeros y compañeras", etc. Since some years ago, they are trying also to invent new names for profesions ("jueza" for female judge, when it has been always the neutral "juez", for example).

The Royal Academy of Spanish language has repeteadly advised that this is bad form, but no doubt this silly language is here to stay.

"riflemen" rather than "rifle-carrying persons of uncertain genital fixation."

Its not the "rifle-carrying persons of uncertain genital fixation." but the wedding cake ordering persons.

poor scalzi...Anybody who has seen the slums of Manila or Rio kisses the ground of America when they get back.

There is a former African king living on welfare in Virginia getting better free healthcare than you can buy in his homeland. http://www.newser.com/story/165405/why-an-african-king-lives-on-public-assistance-in-virginia.html

word "parochial" to describe the average liberal

Some of the dirtiest looks I have gotten was saying "NYC is parochial, all you have to do is sleep with the right people to be a mover/shaker"

Even the open breastfeeding movement is warring on it by shaming men who are uncomfortable with bare breasts in public. "Stop sexualizing these perfectly legitimate symbols of reproductive health cuz baby food." As if our sexual organs have no dual purpose with reproduction. SEX IS REPRODUCTION.

12: I am told that Mandarin pronouns have no genders, a he/she/(maybe)it. With the added benefit of eastern mystique, it's almost racist for these people to not learn and use Chinese instead of their mother tongue.---------

Chinese say the word "ta" for he and she, but it is written differently. He= 他 She=她.

One thing people pushing this shit fail to realize is what a large change it will necessarily make to the language and how it will disconnect future generations from our cultural heritage.

Let me explain. Have you ever listened to a non-native speaker of English that comes from a language without sex-based[1] pronouns? Quite apart from the fact that they get the pronouns wrong all the time and create unintended meanings, they have to use very different sentence structures to convey their meaning because they cannot use sex-correct genders. They are forced to say things like "They, who was a girl[2], ..." where as we are free to use he, she, or it[3] where appropriate.

[1] I deliberately used sex-based here because wankers in Academia like to pretend that they have nothing to do with sex, but they were originally markers of the sex of the individual referred to because the sex of an individual is one of the most important aspects of that individual.

[2] Because the sex of the referent is important to the story. Of course, you can infer some details. Eg, if they refer to a pregnant person, then it would be female except in the dreams of the most ardent SJW.

One thing people pushing this shit fail to realize is what a large change it will necessarily make to the language and how it will disconnect future generations from our cultural heritage.

Feature not bug. They don't want people to be able to read about those who have figured things out in the past. Communism/collectivism has never failed if people are cut off from history. Abe Lincoln's thoughts on blacks are what we tell you.

This tyranny of the minority is just probing what - if anything - will ever make people stop it. It's teenage boundary-testing. If they take your schools, your churches, your God, your flag, your Bible, your sports team, and now your language, Mr. and Mrs. Middle America, will you continue to chase little distractions or will you upend the political landscape and say - no tyranny of the majority, but no tyranny of the minority, either?

Right. The first mistake is to believe M. Crumm's handlers care about the substance. This is about control and repercussions for non-compliance. The cultural Marxists learned long ago language manipulation is requisite to absolute subjugation of the individual.

I'm in favor of "it." It seems to me that "they" is a not-subtle admission of schizophrenia.

I once said the same about tattoos and body piercing--it gave you a heads up. Now the absence does, although those below 25 are foregoing self-manipulation in increasing numbers.

Change the language, change the culture.

Absolutely. Post-graduate school conformed me for a time to substitute "she" for male pronouns. My best friend chided me and it made me reflect and stop. Sadly, he became an economics professor and uses "she" in lieu of male pronouns frequently these days.

One thing people pushing this shit fail to realize is what a large change it will necessarily make to the language and how it will disconnect future generations from our cultural heritage.

The best thing about that is that sooner or later everything "progressive" in USA is copied by our copycats, no matter whether it has sense or not. That's why it's completely pointless to read Polish progressive blogs if one wants to find new ideas or to discuss - all they do is copying. And why it's wonderful? Because a lot of ideas have no sense when copied. Polish is inherently gendered language and one cannot speak without gender (as paworldandtimes noted in @10), and I am pretty sure that within ten years, they will copy this idea anyway. They already are forcing "female" names of professions, which is great, because the endings they add usually are similar to diminutives and result in funny sounding names.

One thing just came to me - if left will start to use new and shiny grammar with new and shiny language, while right will use the old language (while being also forced to at least know leftist) would that mean that leftists would be, eventually, unable to even understand the right-wingers on the purely semantic/lexical level, without additional translation? Imagine a automatic translation device, which would get traditional speech and then it would translate it into new and shiny lingo, as normal everyday use machine.

once again, if any of these fuckwits was actually concerned about 'gender neutrality' they would rehabilitate the prefix "were-".

you've all seen werewolf. many have seen weregild. "were-" means Man.

"man" originally was a gender neutral term in Old English.

41. The Other Robot July 14, 2016 10:44 AMOne thing people pushing this shit fail to realize is what a large change it will necessarily make to the language and how it will disconnect future generations from our cultural heritage.

to the contrary, not only do they know, it is their primary goal.

the Past, you see, is Bourgeois. and the Marxist Proletarian is always at war with the Bourgeois.

consider, for instance, the new remake of 'The Magnificent Seven'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven_%282016_film%29

in the Magnificent / Samurai stories, the village is always being preyed upon by a band of roving bandits.

in the 2016 version, the bad guy is now "under the siege of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue".

why is an 'industrialist' now the villain? wouldn't he simply come into town and by up property and sit there? how are you going to get the repeat visits? etc,etc.

understand this, a roving bandit will almost certainly be 'of the Proletariat'. thus, intrinsically Good to the Marxist deformed mind.

whereas an industrialist ( that is, one who has collected and lives off of Capital ) is the very definition of Bourgeois. therefore, it is the most Holy sacrament of the Communist Manifesto to murder him.

this 2016 version of the film has finally corrected the Reactionary basis of all previous versions of the Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven story, and is now Goodthink.

OT, but I doubt anyone is still checking the Trump poll thread where I mentioned it. Hillary and Trump are now tied in the latest CBS/NYT national poll: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-tied-going-into-conventions-cbsnyt-poll/

But in Italian, where there is no Neuter, are we to refer to il macchino for the car or la libra for the book?

Silly goose. HuffPo is already on it, at least when it comes to Spanish...

http://archive.is/uOMIl

Though how a collection of upper middle class white women in Brooklyn and Manhattan imposing their standards on non-white people isn't something or other-ism I have yet to see explained. Doubtless they're working on that as well.

1) Their philosophy contains no inherent self-limitations, so it always propels them to have to change something more, like some political juggernaut. 2) They are not allied with God so they are unable to be creative; the only thing they end up doing is always destructive. 3) They have too much time on their hands, due to the stored-up capital of the system they despise.

Put it all together, and you have increasing insanity like this. You can't change them, the only thing you can do is segregate them away somewhere, or if that is impossible, eradicating them. God in Heaven, I am so tired of this nonsense.

I almost wish I could understand why these people do what they do, but I'm afraid exploring the depths of their minds would only further sink my own into the depths of feeling like insanity is the new sanity.

Seriously the rocket lifted off and is now drifting away from earth, I was not on it.Completely off their rock without any root in earthbound matters.

The fun of it is starting to wane, I'm increasingly getting worried that their agenda is gaining traction as the hordes of normies roll over to their relentless barrage of decadence through social and other mass media.Maybe worse it appears the political class and journalists are the ones promoting their senseless deconstruction which they classify as progress.It's almost like they don't understand what is going on, or worse they know exactly what they are doing.

At least we can be rebellious and call everyone and everything he and she, what a sad day it is in the "most enlightened" civilization when that is rebellion.Oh well from now on my knives will be him and my computer will be him, my car will be her. Wooooo fuck the system. Orz

Yeah, I still remember my logic and reason class in college with much fondness....except that one chapter on using politically correct language like the singular "they." How was that even...? Never mind. Why ask?

But in Italian, where there is no Neuter, are we to refer to il macchino for the car or la libra for the book?

Silly goose. HuffPo is already on it, at least when it comes to Spanish...

http://archive.is/uOMIl

Though how a collection of upper middle class white women in Brooklyn and Manhattan imposing their standards on non-white people isn't something or other-ism I have yet to see explained. Doubtless they're working on that as well.

65. Jill July 14, 2016 12:10 PMYeah, I still remember my logic and reason class in college with much fondness....except that one chapter on using politically correct language like the singular "they." How was that even...? Never mind. Why ask?

uh, because it's a LOGIC class? and if they can't construct a reasonable and convincing syllogism for it, the practice needs to be discarded by the very rules in which they are instructing you.

Chinese say the word "ta" for he and she, but it is written differently. He= 他 She=她.

That is a modern affectation. Older writing does not use different written pronouns.

As I recall, this addition of a special character for "she" happened in the early 20th century, along with the "emancipation" of women – who, as we know, "hold up half the sky". (Apparently the women's half has been expanded to cover the whole sky, which is why most men must now crouch, as in going through a low doorway. Thus is "equality" achieved.)

Previously 他 tā, with the radical for "person" or "human" 人 rén (not "male") on the left, was used for both sexes; the radical was replaced with "female" 女 nǚ to make the written "she". Which my dictionary (Wenlin) terms a "neologism", as it does the word it gives for "it", 它, also pronounced tā.

Wenlin adds: "However, 'he, she, or it' was once written 它, then 佗, and then 他. So 他 may have been a simplification of 佗. In spoken Chinese, pronouns have no gender. The single word tā means 'he, she, or it'. Only in modern times did somebody start writing 她 for tā 'she'. 它 tā now means 'it' exclusively."

So apparently the traditional 他 tā was actually the gender- and animate-neutral pronoun the language police prefer, and it was feminists who insisted on a special pronoun (written, anyway) for females. Funny, coming from the land that made "politically correct" a household word.

Then again, maybe we should all speak Finnish, which has a single pronoun hän for both sexes (and according to Google Translate, another se for "it" which can also be used for he or she).

In German, there is no rhyme or reason as to which nouns are masculine and which are neuter. At least with feminine ones you can tell based upon certain endings (-e, -ung, -eit, -in, etc.). I've wondered why German hasn't collapsed the masculine and neuter genders together yet, and figure it's because having a formal written language has prevented it.

But in Italian, where there is no Neuter, are we to refer to il macchino for the car or la libra for the book?

I just see the use of singular "they" -- or, for that matter, "she" when used for a hypothetical person rather than an actual woman -- as a shit-test (if the writer is female) or male feminist submission to the Borgette (if the writer is male).

On the subject of language: Let's be more vigilant about not using "guys" and "women" in the same sentence.

Say it with me: "MEN"

PA

@66 paworldandtimesI've noticed people that too, and wonder how they could seriously get away with that. I hate the word "guy" as a rule, but seeing formulations like "women and guys" makes me cringe.

Then again, I'm not sure many of those writers have encountered actual men before, so there's that. We should start reserving "guy" for a doofus male with a bad case of low testosterone.

Forty years ago I came across a prospectus for an "intentional community" in New Zealand (very progressive) wherein was an article discussing the "pronoun problem". The community had been using the briefly popular co/cos/coself, which the writer noted "are about as awkward as 'tey' [another popular at the time], and consequently will never find their way into everyday use." And proposed an alternative set, based on current usage so not so alien, but different enough to make the point: e, es, em. (I note that according to Wikipedia this set actually goes back to 1890.) I thought it was not a bad idea – to fix the one issue where I had to agree the feminists have a point – and have been using them since. Haven't caught on, though; and I suppose the effort to correct this one small awkward lacuna in English will be swept away in the general disgust and frustration in the majority population that are looking to be the final product of feminism.

natschuster wrote:In Hebrew the verbs conjugate differently for the different genders. "Hoo omar" is he said. "Hee omroh" is she said. "Ani Oheiv" is how a man says "I love." A woman says "Ani Ahav." How would the suggestion cited above work in Hebrew.

I can hear your American accent through this. In factHoo Amar - he saidHee Amra - she saidAni Ohev - I (a man) loveAni Ohevet - I (a woman) love

What about a mixed group of males and females? Oh, the horror! With one guy and 99 women, you still use the male form. The discrimination is strong.

And if you want to use something gender neutral? We have two ways. Either use the male form and be done with it, or use silly-looking slashes:Hoo me'da'ber - He talksHee me'da'be'ret - She talksHoo/Hee me'da'ber/et - he/she talks

As earlier noted, one becomes a rebel merely by insisting on grammatically correct English. I deliberately use the terms Negro, Mulatto, and Oriental when commenting at cuck blogs. Since I don't use patently offensive or slang terms, the mods generally let it ride - but, as intended, it drives the commentariat mad.

SJWs and all leftists are inherently parochial. Pauline Kael syndrome writ large. I love being called xenophobic and narrow minded by people whose experience of the broader world might consist of a visit to Toronto, while I've studied and used a number of languages and lived in and visited numerous countries.

@55:once again, if any of these fuckwits was actually concerned about 'gender neutrality' they would rehabilitate the prefix "were-".you've all seen werewolf. many have seen weregild. "were-" means Man."man" originally was a gender neutral term in Old English.They need to rehabilitate the Old English "guma" as well. It still barely hangs on in the word "bridegroom" which originally had nothing to do with grooms. It was "brydguma" which meant "bride's man."Thus, we can have gumman (= male man) and wyfman (the original for the modern "woman" which means female man) again, and use man alone to indicate either.But more people are familiar with "were" (due to its use in werewolf, of course), so it's much more likely to catch on. Weremen and wyfmen, unite! Men from all over, unite!

Embrace the Singular ‘They:’Oh, “they” can be singular? I know a gal who refers to herself as “they”, but I just assumed that meant she was transnumber and self-identifies as plural.

paworldandtimes wrote:English is fucked up enough with its "you" being both singular and plural.Thou hast an excellent point. See items outlinesofenglis00masouoft and englishgrammarin00masouoft on archive.org .